Monday, January 14, 2013

F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby VI

"Bored the living crap outta me. How can a book be so long and nothing happens?"

"I still don't get the point of the story. So he died for a beautiful girl? What else did he accomplish, what was the point?"

"i found this book a little hard to get into. right from the start it jumps you straight into the middle of this setting and its very scarcely described. you are imediatly introduced to an aray of new charecters, and it is hard to understand who is doing what and what did that someone say. then further throughout this book it describes the settings in a wierd way the actions of others are hard to follow as the description becomes scarce and the dialouge jumps back an forth. to me it was a very strange book and i had a hard time enjoying it."

"Okay, I'm an English teacher and I'm supposed to LOVE and ADORE this book, but guess what? I don't. I find Fitzgerald to be a bit nauseating. I hate the protagonist, Nick, who really isn't much of a strong protagonist, so one could argue Gatsby is the protagonist, but he's pretty flat too. But literally, this is a book where... NOTHING happens until the end. BLECK. This is the book where maybe 20% of my students think it's 'ok' and about 5% who 'love it', but the remaining claim it's these classics that really make them hate reading. I don't blame them. In high school, I would dislike it too. I'm an adult and dislike it - after reading it many times. Sure, I get the literary 'worth' of the novel and how it's a metaphor for society at the time and the downfall of wealth and the robber baron era. Wonderful. And I sure can appreciate it. But much like some people look at great works of art that cost thousands of dollars and go 'UGH.. that's ugly'.. that's how I feel about Gatsby. I get it. I appreciate it. I wouldn't pay for it."

"A suprising amount of my students list this as their favourite book, and I'm always like 'Really?!?'"

"Bad. Very Bad. Lethargic and aimless. What was he point? The only decent character was Tom B. His boisterous nonsense made me laugh. Everyone else was death on two legs. The most worthless people ever. Daisy is hands down the most loathsome female character of all time and I say female because Gatsby take ls the overall crown. All she did throughout the entire story was complain about how hot it was and whisper weird nonsense into people's ears. I wanted Nick to strangle her right in front of everyone! The worst. The absolute worst. And Fitzgerald from a structural point of view didn't follow one single guideline in how to plot a book and it shows. I want my money back from the Fitzgerald estate like now."

THE NAZI AND HIS BOISTEROUS NONSENSE MADE ME LAUGH

"There are no redeeming qualities or good messages in this book. It sucks, end of."

"The gay Gatsby ... I can understand why, as a sort of general piece of the 1920s, that stands out as a good example of that general kind of writing, it is an important and critical literary piece, but really, there are hundreds of books from the same period that would be of much more interest to the children... THink of the children!"

"Modern editors would have destroyed it."

"Yeah I read this book for school cause I was forced to mother fucking teacher you know. Well it turned out pretty gay first then it got filthy gay. I was like what the fuck is this shit. Thats about all I can say about this shit."